


any intelligent fool

by werepope (quiteparadise)



Category: Digimon Adventure Zero Two | Digimon Adventure 02
Genre: Growing Up, M/M, Warning: mentions of exams, pre-domestic bliss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-02
Updated: 2017-04-02
Packaged: 2018-10-14 04:32:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,802
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10529016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quiteparadise/pseuds/werepope
Summary: Daisuke isn’t going to the same school as Ken, but that's never been the plan.  There's no way he's getting within a hundred meters of the wait list for the University of Tokyo, and no way Ken will mess up so badly as to miss being within the top two percent nationally.  So Daisuke aims for the vicinity instead, hit and miss all the schools in a few square kilometers.  When he gets accepted to Komazawa, they sit down with a map and split the difference between the two.





	

_"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger,_  
_more complex, and more violent._  
_It takes a touch of genius--_  
_and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction."_  
\- **E.F. Schumacher**

Daisuke isn’t going to the same school as Ken, but that's never been the plan. There's no way he's getting within a hundred meters of the wait list for the University of Tokyo, and no way Ken will mess up so badly as to miss being within the top two percent nationally. So Daisuke aims for the vicinity instead, hit and miss all the schools in a few square kilometers. When he gets accepted to Komazawa, they sit down with a map and split the difference between the two.

The train ride out to Setagaya every other day for a week sucks, and he’s never seen so many cramped up little bathrooms in his life, but they were never going to manage perfect on the first go no matter where they ended up, and Daisuke isn’t going to let something as minor as that kill his enthusiasm.

They sign a two year lease on a sixteen square meter apartment with a loft they could cram themselves and a futon into with only some elbowing. It will be worth it for the extra floor space, Ken decides, and Daisuke can’t imagine ever getting annoyed by close sleeping quarters.

Because he’s been coasting on the absolute certainty of making it happen, fueled by the yet unplumbed depths of his own determination, he didn’t account for his parents grinding things to a sudden halt. Didn’t think of them at all, really, which just goes to show him, yet again, the inconveniences of the formerly avoidable.

“Setagaya?” his mother asks. She’s frozen with the refrigerator door open, plastic dish of pork loin hovering just above the shelf in her sudden, shocked deathgrip.

“It’s not that far,” Daisuke says. “It’s like twenty minutes.”

It’s over an hour, actually, although it’s felt narrowed down to a lot less on the way there every day so far, with Daisuke amped up on caffeine and the impending greatness that wells up in his chest, a tight little bubble of joy that he has to swallow around when meets up with Ken at Shibuya.

“When are you going?”

They get to move in in two weeks, just enough time to settle in before the school year starts, to sort out the apartment and figure the neighborhood out and do a couple unofficial campus tours, because Ken’s the kind of person who wants to pre-plan his route and Daisuke is going to do his damndest to stay glued to Ken's hip until he physically can’t be any longer. But Daisuke’s mother is still white-knuckling the ingredients for dinner. He probably should have at least mentioned something before now, set the course for this conversation, instead of springing it on her with shogayaki on the line.

“Before school starts.” He shrugs, nudging the fridge door further open to snag a bottle of water out of the door, to break the spell and restart her hardware. She backs up when he crowds her, but doesn’t do much more than take a half step back, let him close the door, and drop the pork on the counter.

“That’s not far off.”

His mother is 155 centimeters. He's been taller than her since before he turned thirteen, when he started shooting up like a weed. He's always looked more like his dad, has his nose and skin tone and singing voice, horrible as it is. But he’s a lot more like his mom in all the ways that matter. He’s got her temper, her stubbornness, her sense of humor. And he knows himself too well to think he’s going to be able to get out of this, now that he also has all her of attention.

“We found a place already,” he says, pitching it instead of trying to pass it off. She should be proud. She and his dad were both a little gobsmacked when he decided to go to a university, but they were all for it when he started cram school. It shouldn’t be that much of a surprise that he’s moving out to attend.

He can actually watch her compute it. She gets this expression like she’s bitten into a seed. That’s what Ken calls it when it’s on Daisuke’s face. He says it’s adorable. Daisuke thinks it looks a little painful, from this side. He shores himself up against it, against the realizations that are going to come after.

He’s never hidden what Ken means to him, not from anyone. His parents know that Ken’s his best friend, that they’re really close. They’ve probably even suspected something more, although Ken is too paranoid to let them get caught doing anything more racy than sitting on Daisuke’s bed together, and their reflexes have been good enough so far to manage it, although Daisuke has taken more than one rolling dive off of Ken and onto the mattress to save everyone a whole lot of embarrassment.

If his parents have thought about it, they’ve never mentioned it. Never even hinted strongly enough for Daisuke to pick it up. And he appreciates that, he really does, except for right now, when he has to sort of grasp at the hope that his mother is going to make the right assumptions, but not so many of them that they also have to have _that_ conversation.

“You and Ken?” she asks finally, watching his reaction carefully enough to catch the way he goes faintly jelly-legged and tips himself into a lean against the fridge to cover it.

His mother loves Ken. She dotes on him so endlessly even Daisuke has rolled his eyes, and no one loves talking about Ken more than Daisuke. Ken’s been an honorary Motomiya since that very first sleepover, and he’s by far the best of them. Ken’s involvement in this scheme is the best thing he has going for him right now, but she’s still got that look on her face.

Daisuke groans, thumping his head back against the fridge. “Come on, mom. Komazawa’s too far to take the train every single day. Besides, it’s gotta happen sometime, right?”

She hums something that’s definitely not agreement. “I thought you said it was twenty minutes.”

“Yeah, well--” There are lies he can get away with (when he got home, how studying is going, what he had for lunch) and lies that he can’t (if he took out the garbage, how much his new shoes cost, who ate all the cake). Geography and train schedules are absolutely provable, so he hedges, steers her down a less damning track. “You know how I am in the morning.”

“I just thought you’d stay for a while longer,” she says. “Save money.”

He’s been saving for the past year, all the money from working last summer and most of it from his part time job, minus a little here and there for junk food and movie tickets. He’s got enough to cover the deposit on the apartment and the first two months rent. It turns out that Ken didn’t make anything from the child genius gig. He’s going to university on hefty but eagerly offered scholarships. But he has a cousin who manages an American style restaurant in Komaba and the promise of a job as a waiter, if he wants it. Ken hasn’t said yes yet, but he took Daisuke by for lunch one day and, now that Daisuke knows what the uniforms look like, and he’s going to try his best to insist on it.

“Mom,” he says, less plaintive this time. “I’ve got money.”

“You shouldn’t focus on working your first year. University is a lot harder than high school. Your dad and I--”

“We signed the lease on Tuesday.”

They were sixteen when they decided to move in together. Daisuke had no idea what he wanted to do with his life, apart from spend as much of it with Ken as possible. It wasn’t exactly mutual. Ken had had universities vying for his attention as soon as his high school entrance ceremony was done. He knew where he wanted to go, what he wanted to study, and which field he wanted to work in after graduation. Daisuke wasn’t necessarily secondary to that but he was even more of a sure thing, and he didn’t mind taking the back seat, at least during exam time.

Ken’s a better tactician than he is, at least half the time. He’s more levelheaded, more detail oriented. Ken created a color-coded study schedule for him in the run-up to entrance exams. Ken did the financials and then blocked off a mile of the city for them to do their apartment hunting in. Ken sat his parents down over dinner six months ago and told them that he was moving to be nearer to school, and tried to tell Daisuke to do the same.

He probably should have listened this time, too.

The thing is, Daisuke still doesn’t know what he wants to do with his life, but he doesn’t have to pick a path for another two years, and he figures something will catch his attention. He’s still absolutely certain that he wants Ken, though, as often and as near as he can get him. The rest of it is absolutely secondary. Convincing his parents of that, convincing _anyone_ of that is downright impossible, Ken included.

“Look,” Daisuke says, settling his hands on his mother’s shoulders and ducking his head to look her in the eye. “I’m a slob. I sort of hate combing my hair. I one hundred percent hate cooking and laundry and brooming--”

“Sweeping.”

“See?”

“Daisuke,” she warns, mouth twitching.

“I’m horrible to live with. Just ask Jun. I'm the worst. When Ken gets tired of putting up with me, I’ll be back, I promise. Give it a week. Two, tops.”

He has felt this exact determination since he was sixteen and planning a long stretch of uncertain future with Ken; since he was fourteen and leaning down over the edge of his bed to kiss Ken for the first time; since he was twelve and felt Ken’s heartbeat thump against his own ribs. He doesn’t know for sure that Ken feels it too. There aren’t words big enough to encompass the absoluteness of it, and every time he tries Ken just smiles and says “I love you too” which is frustrating and thrilling in one deep swoop. 

He can’t make his mother understand it either, but she smiles through a sigh and pulls him closer to touch their foreheads together, like maybe she understands enough.

“I think you’ll do better than that,” she says. “Ken’s too nice to throw you out.”

**Author's Note:**

> Fifteen years later, I'm writing Digimon fic again. At least we're past the days of ff.net.
> 
> I have a brand new [Digimon tumblr](http://paildramonnn.tumblr.com) and need friends. Help.


End file.
